The Abandoned Mental Hospital - Original Writing
I collected several items that I would be in need of because today was
when my friends and I were going to explore Cane Hill, the mental
hospital that has been abandoned for years. I gathered a torch, my
slingshot and a few French bangers. I left my house feeling thrilled
as well as sick, for I was about to enter a hospital that has been
haunted even since people worked there.
I met Michael and Shaun outside their houses; both of them had torches
because we knew it would be pitch black, as dusk came upon us. We set
off, for the first five minutes there was complete silence amid us, my
friends and I were as jittery as a novice driver as none of us had
clue what to expect.
Warily, we slowly approached the front gate to find a very convenient
hole in it. As we clambered through the tiny hole we put our torches
on, since dark was already upon us. On the way through the jagged,
cratered path, which looked like it had been bombed over and over
again, we stumbled upon an average sized house which had every window
boarded up - except for one.
I felt a strange shiver down my back as we realised that we had to
scale a ten foot wall, just to get inside. When all three of us were
over the wall, we stared silently through the open window which still
had shards of glass around it, only to see faint outlines in the house
dark as a coal mine. Seeing as I was the biggest, my friends urged me
through first. I felt terrified as well as curious. I stepped into a
corridor which looked around ten meters long, but as we slowly crept
through the corridor it felt like much more, like it never ended.
Around the first corner it became pitch black. All we could see was
what our torches managed to cover with its light.
In this paper I will be comparing the visit to the State Mental Institution and the
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the film Girl, Interrupted directed by James Mangold authors both look at American psychiatric institutions of the 1960s and explore the idea that the hospitals act as microcosms for society. A microcosm is a small universe representative of a larger one thus suffers the same problems of conformity and rebellion, prejudice against minorities and authority figures ruling absolutely. Both authors use stylistic techniques to position the audience to respond to ideas common in both texts.
Forcing someone to take medication or be hospitalized against their will seems contrary to an individual’s right to refuse medical treatment, however, the issue becomes complicated when it involves individuals suffering from a mental illness. What should be done when a person has lost their grasp on reality, or if they are at a risk of harming themselves or others? Would that justify denying individuals the right to refuse treatment and issuing involuntary treatment? Numerous books and articles have been written which debates this issue and presents the recommendations of assorted experts.
Schizophrenia in The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wall-Paper," does more than just tell the story of a woman who suffers at the hands of 19th century quack medicine. Gilman created a protagonist with real emotions and a real psych that can be examined and analyzed in the context of modern psychology. In fact, understanding the psychology of the unnamed protagonist is well on the way to understanding the story itself. " The Yellow Wall-Paper," written in first-person narrative, charts the psychological state of the protagonist as she slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia (a disintegration of the personality).
The stigma and negative associations that go with mental illness have been around as long as mental illness itself has been recognized. As society has advanced, little changes have been made to the deep-rooted ideas that go along with psychological disorders. It is clearly seen throughout history that people with mental illness are discriminated against, cast out of society, and deemed “damaged”. They are unable to escape the stigma that goes along with their illness, and are often left to defend themselves in a world that is not accepting of differences in people. Society needs to realize what it is doing, and how it is affecting these people who are affected with mental illness. If we continue to not help them, and to foster their illness, it will only get worse.
Over the years people who had mental disabilities were not always treated like human beings. The mistreatment of people in psychiatric hospitals stayed relatively the same from the 1900’s until around the 1950s and 60s. The mentally disabled had very different treatment, perception, and rights than what they have now. There have been laws put in place in order to let the mentally disabled have more rights to their treatment and education.
What comes to mind when you hear the words “insane asylum”? Do such terms as lunatic, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? More than likely these are the terminology that most of us would use to describe our perception of insane asylums. However, those in history that had a heart’s desire to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different viewpoint. Insane asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate purpose in the reformation of insane asylums in the nineteenth century was to improve the treatment for the mentally ill by providing a humane and caring environment for them to reside.
For many decades the mentally ill or insane have been hated, shunned, and discriminated against by the world. They have been thrown into cruel facilities, said to help cure their mental illnesses, where they were tortured, treated unfairly, and given belittling names such as retards, insane, demons, and psychos. However, reformers such as Dorothea Dix thought differently of these people and sought to help them instead. She saw the inhumanity in these facilities known as insane asylums or mental institutions, and showed the world the evil that wandered inside these asylums. Although movements have been made to improve conditions in insane asylums, and were said to help and treat the mentally ill, these brutally abusive places were full of disease and disorder, and were more like concentration camps similar to those in Europe during WWII than hospitals.
As a nurse in a psychiatry emergency room, the staff must collaborate for the safety of patients and staff. There is a triage process that must be followed when a patient comes to the Psych ED, security takes any electronic devices, keys, purses, lighters, knives, wallets, etc. A nurse takes a mini-triage, which determines whether a patient needs to go to the medical ED side, if the patient is cleared to go to the Psych ED, the nurse must then decide whether to place the patient in a locked involuntary area or unlocked voluntary area. Any patient that goes into the involuntary waiting area must be searched, and go into a patient gown. Once there the patient must be seen by a nurse, then by a doctor. If a patient is agitated to the point of
“A stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me,
Domestic violence is becoming more and more of a reality in today’s world; 57,000 people have been killed in domestic violence situations in the last 25 years (Fantuzzo and Fusco, “Children’s Direct Exposure to Types of Domestic Violence Crime: A Population-based Investigation”). This alarming statistic has prompted the increase of women’s shelters, usually known as “safe houses,” across the nation. Since safe houses are usually non-profit organizations dependent on donations, critics wonder if these shelters’ benefits outweigh the high cost it takes to keep them running. Are women’s shelters actually effective? Based on statistical evidence, the beneficial resources that safe houses provide, and multiple survivors’ stories, it can be proven that women’s shelters are indeed effective and very necessary.
Author Charlotte Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives a personal short story about mental health care during her time. This account is personal, as the character in the story has experiences close to what author Gilman had during her period of receiving the ‘resting cure’ (Gilman). While many themes are described in the short story, the theme of passive health-care is especially prominent. The story delves into particular detail with the administration and effects of the resting cure in regards to the main character’s mental state. This paper will analyze the evidence given by “The Yellow Wallpaper” that the resting cure is not effective, give reasons why it may be due to the main characters need for a creative outlet, and examine the actual
I didn't waste the readers time because I went straight to the point in the first paragraph by putting the main character in the mental hospital right away. While writing the short story I thought of ways to make sure the reader wouldn't get bored with the story. I also tried to make it very accurate so that while the readers are reading it the readers wouldn't want to read it because it’s inaccurate.
In October of my freshman year, I was admitted into a psychiatric hospital for one week. The events that led up to this are long and many in number, so much so that to explain it all fully would require forty more pages and essay submissions, something neither you nor I have time for. They don't matter any way. What matters is that I was there, along with seven other perfect strangers who would later become the greatest people I had ever had the blessing of meeting and yet destined to never see again.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (2013) mental illness is defined as a health